Conventional techniques exist to compress data. Examples of two lossless techniques that are disclosed in standards documents include: “DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification Version 1.3,” Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 1951, published May 1996 (hereinafter referred to as “Deflate” or the “Deflate technique”); and “GZIP File Format Specification Version 4.3,” IETF RFC 1952, published May 1996 (hereinafter referred to as “Gzip” or the “Gzip technique”). The Deflate technique forms the basis for the Gzip technique.
The Deflate and Gzip techniques have gained relatively widespread use and acceptance. It would be desirable to increase the speed with which Deflate and/or Gzip-compatible compression-related operations may be carried out, without substantially deleteriously impacting the compression ratio of the resulting compressed data.